


Brotherhood: Clocked

by BlackQat



Category: Brotherhood (TV 2006)
Genre: Eddie Parry, F/M, Jason Isaacs character, Kath Parry - Freeform, Michael Caffee - Freeform, Rose Caffee - Freeform, Tommy Caffee - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 02:27:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14392296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackQat/pseuds/BlackQat
Summary: Michael neatly scotches Eddie’s first clumsy swing. He’s strong enough to grab Eddie by the back of his suit collar and put him down like a dog. He doesn’t even stand up to do it. “What’d I do?” he says to Freddie and the others. Eddie picks himself up from under Michael’s table. “My fuckin’ wife! My fuckin’ wife, Michael!” A few people look around toward the action, but it’s over quickly, and the center is Michael; Kath can see them virtually shrugging.





	Brotherhood: Clocked

**Author's Note:**

> That wedding at the end of Season 1 of "Brotherhood"? Remember Michael's beatdown?
> 
> Some events before it happened and what happened after.

 

The Finnerty reception is bustling, people are getting tipsier and some are getting drunk, including Kath’s husband Eddie … who noticed Kath’s and Michael’s not-so-subtle return from their parking lot tryst. Their quickie.

With Michael, Kath can reach a climax so fast. He’s just the right fit for her. She sits back down at the table, nervous about what Eddie might say to her, nervous about him yelling at her in front of everyone. Except when he drinks, Eddie is fairly even-tempered, but since Michael’s been back in Providence, he’s been on edge and easily upset … and drinking more than usual.

Kath, regretting her audaciousness, knows she just rubbed salt in the wound, but _Michael_ … Eddie’s never made her starry-eyed. Eddie’s never left her breathless with desire. Being sexual with him is not easy, like it is with Michael. Eddie works really hard to please her, but she has to ask him for _every_ little thing in bed. Michael just … knows. (He should, they were together for years before he disappeared and Kath, wanting kids, settled for the nice, mostly dependable guy with a steady job.)

_Oh no._

Unusually bold, Eddie Parry is striding over to the table where Michael and Freddie Cork are talking. He’s yelling, “Hey cocksucker!”  Michael and Freddie lift their heads and Michael turns curiously toward the voice. Michael neatly scotches Eddie’s first clumsy swing. He’s strong enough to grab Eddie by the back of his suit collar and put him down like a dog. He doesn’t even stand up to do it. “What’d I do?” he says to Freddie and the others. Eddie picks himself up from under Michael’s table. “My fuckin’ wife! My fuckin’ _wife_ , Michael!” A few people look around toward the action, but it’s over quickly, and the center is Michael; Kath can see them virtually shrugging.

Kath looks on in embarrassment but can’t add to the too-public scene by trying to calm her husband, who is now dusting himself off, face bright red, and steaming for the bar. She’s schooling her expression to maintain some semblance of “cool,” but she can see judgmental glances coming her way. Not unusual. A lot of people classed her as “trash” when she and Michael were together (without benefit of clergy) before he left. They all knew, with or without proof, that he was worse than just a “bad boy.” Though you’d never know that from Rose Caffee. Her boy can do no wrong. So Rose hates Kath for making Michael look bad. What a laugh.

Michael will wait a few minutes before he looks her way; he won’t want to give Kath away completely and he’s in the middle of “business” discussions with Freddie Cork.

She’s not looking forward to being home with Eddie tonight. Shouting, threatened blows. Maybe actual blows this time, _God. I deserve it_. Tension so thick it sticks in her craw.

Stupid, stupid, stupid of her to screw Michael in his car, anybody could have seen them kissing in the parking lot and jumping into the car. She can’t resist Michael. He’s more of a man than Eddie any day, and it makes her wet just to think of him and his embrace, the sound of his deep raspy voice, his muscular – no, perfect – body, and … _and_. She’s helpless in his sharp blue gaze. To her, he’s perfect, and never mind the temper, as long as he doesn’t take it out on her (and he never has in his life, except for yelling and slamming doors, when they were living together). Well, once he put a fist through a wall, but that had nothing to do with Kath. That was “work.”

Hours later, Kath Parry is looking for Michael and Eddie outside in the dark. She’s worried. She’s checked everywhere, climbed the stairs to the loft above the reception hall, and even looked in the big storage shed. He has disappeared from the wedding reception, and Eddie has too. Maybe they went out to the parking lot.

Surely Eddie would not be able to hurt Michael, and surely Michael would not do harm to Eddie (well, maybe a punch in the face). Cuckolded him, yeah, but that’s on Kath.

In the parking lot, she sees a man walking quickly away, and hurries over to where light spills from a doorway. A tall figure is stretched out on the ground … dark liquid pooling around his head … she recognizes Michael and screams. Kneeling beside him she calls to him, “Michael! Can you hear me Michael? Michael!” and mindlessly chants, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” After a few seconds of this she fumble her cell phone out of her evening bag and dials 9-1-1.

“I’m sorry I don’t know the address,” she says, flummoxed by her own panic when the operator asks. “It’s a reception, a banquet hall …”

“ Rhodes,” a tall bystander supplies the name and kneels by Michael as well. He looks pretty steady, a take-charge type. Kath hands him her phone. She realizes it’s Tommy Caffee, who hasn’t looked at her once. He’s addressing the operator. “… No, we can’t turn him over to do CPR, there may be a spinal injury.”

“Oh Michael.” Weeping, Kath whispers to him and touches his head and the side of his face lightly with her hand. “Michael, it’s Kath, I’m here, I’m here by you, please stay, please don’t ….” Sticky, bloody, warm. _My fault my fault my fault, Hail Mary Mother of God, the Lord is with thee, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death …_

Rose Caffee is coming, _oh God, Michael’s mother, she’s gonna have a fuckin’ cow and she looks drunk, oh shit._

Kath stands up, her peachy silk gown stained, dripping, clotting with Michael’s blood. “We called 9-1-1,” she says as Rose stumbles to kneel at Michael’s side. Rose pays her no mind, she’s weeping over her favorite son, Irish accent coming through as she croons, “My Michael, my son, my Michael, may God forgive whatever you’ve done in your life, I love you, it doesn’t matter what sins you’ve done, stay with us, oh please. I forgive you and God forgives you.” She looks up at Tommy, who’s handing the phone back to Kath. “Call a priest, Tommy.”

“As soon as I find out what hospital, Ma.”

 _Last rites,_ Kath thinks, going even deeper into panic.

A siren, getting closer, and soon, the sound of doors thrown open and a gurney drawn out and thrown onto its wheels. One EMT runs over, and glancing over Michael, shouts back to the truck, “We need a backboard and a neck brace and headblocks to protect his skull, the left occipital lobe’s bashed in.”

 _Bashed in, you don’t need a gun to kill somebody, oh Jesus Jesus._ Michael has known this a long time, hasn’t he. He’s a bad man, but good to Kath, he loves her, and she loves him, and in spite of being a mother of two, she wants to be with Michael more than anything and now maybe she never will. Tears and snot stream down her face and she doesn’t want to leave, she wants to ride in the ambulance with him but Rose and Tommy Caffee stop her with cold looks.

“If it wasn’t for you, you slut, this wouldn’t have happened,” Rose hisses. “You left your husband no choice but to attack my son.”

Kath shakes her head, crying. “Eddie couldn’t have done this. Almost nobody could creep up on Michael like this.”

“Well we’ll just leave that to the police, won’t we,” Rose says in her superior tone of voice. Tommy glances at Kath with something like sympathy and takes Rose’s elbow as the EMTs work with Michael.

They’re being very careful with him, not rushing anything, a female paramedic holding his head in the proper relative position to his body as they roll him, gently sliding the board under him, aligning everything perfectly, and he’s on his back, the one paramedic still holding his head. They apply a stiff cervical collar to support his upper spine and skull, then position it and protect it with foam blocks, fixing him in position with a strap across his forehead. They strap his body into place on the backboard and the paramedic is flashing a light into his eyes. “One pupil fixed and dilated; the other’s reactive” and a bunch of other medical stuff, BP and so on. Moving swiftly they load Michael onto the gurney, then into the ambulance. Not a sound, not a grunt, not an exhale, not a groan, from Michael. He’s unconscious or worse. Kath’s heart is beating so loud she can hear it inside her head.

Kath is pacing nervously and wringing her hands. She’s always thought that was a stupid expression from old-fashioned novels, but she’s doing it, so it must be real. “What hospital?” she whispers to the nearest  tech, and the muscular EMT says, “Our Lady of Mercy.”

A crowd is starting to gather for the excitement announced by the siren, and some firemen and police from the Hill who were attending the reception are holding them back. Kath looks up and spots Eddie scanning for her. Fortunately she’s surrounded. Right now her blonde hair is like a flag in the darkness.

Tommy Caffee, like his brother, is a sharp observer, and while the EMTs are getting Michael set up in the ambulance, he sidles over to Kath with the long-suffering expression he’s always worn when dealing with Matters Michael. He murmurs, “Come by the hospital. Just sit somewhere away from us during the emergency room exams. I’ll let you know what’s going on with him.”

“Thank you Tommy,” Kath says, looking up, but Tommy has already moved on to take his mother’s arm to help her up into the ambulance.

Kath’s running for the car. She has to get to it before Eddie does, so she can be at the hospital for Michael.

A lapsed Catholic, like many people on the Hill, she prays all the way. She even remembers the Latin from Catholic school, _Ave Maria, gratia plena, ora pro nobis_ ….

It’s hard to drive with tears streaming down her face, but Kath makes it to Guest Parking at the hospital and hurries in. The blood is stiffening the fabric of her dress, and she rushes, as fast as she can, to the waiting room in the ER. Her shoes are too high and she nearly slips on the shiny linoleum floor.

She wishes Rose wasn’t here, but she also knows how much Michael loves his mother. Kath ducks into a separate area as advised and is too nervous to occupy herself with anything but praying. She sees a priest heading for the ER where Michael is being worked on. _God forgive me I’m a hypocrite and a sinner but please please please let Michael live, except for my kids (and Eddie) he means more to me than anything in this life, please God please. Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with the Thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus, Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen …._

It’s amazing that in this time of trouble these prayers come back, these prayers she learned in Catholic school, and they’re soothing to Kath, even though she feels so hypocritical. _Gentle Jesus, who cured the sick and laid a healing hand upon the lame, the blind and the handicapped, look with compassion upon Michael ... I know there’s more, forgive me, I’m a sinner, the worst of sinners, and Michael is, too …._

She prayed when she was twice in the pain of childbirth, then never went to church except to baptize them. _Well I’m a hard case, like most of us on the Hill, but You still love us, right? Oh, God, I just want him to live, even if he never looks at me again. I bet Rose is praying her ass off right now and she never goes to church either._

A prayer to Saint Jude comes to her too, patron of impossible causes:

_Oh Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the traitor who delivered thy beloved Master to His enemies, your name … forgotten by many … the patron of hopeless cases. Pray for Michael who’s in such danger; make use … [oh how does it go?!] bring visible and speedy help where help … where help is despaired of. Please help in this great need, that we may receive the consolations of heaven in all these … tribulations? … oh help save Michael, and I will bless God with you and all … throughout eternity. I promise, O St. Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, I will never cease to honor you as my special, powerful patron, Amen._

She’s forgotten the exact wording but is sure Saint Jude and God don’t care, as long as she’s sincere. And Kath is probably more sincere right now than she has ever been in her life.

_Michael, Michael, I can’t live anymore without you._


End file.
